Morning journal and courier., 1887-05-19

from that of the Victoria. But the power of the broadside discharge from each ship is better indicated by the quantity of pow. der expended than by the weight of metal discharged and while the broadside fire from the Victory consumed only three hun
 dred and twenty-five pounds, that from the
 Victoria will consume three thousand
 pounds. In point of range, accuracy, pen-
 etrating power and shell power the differ
 ence is so great in favor of the Victoria
 that comparison would be ridiculous.
 II have yet to give you the particulars
 of the Victorias armament. It will consist
 of two one hundred and ten ton guns,
 mounted in a revolving turret and firing
 ahead or on either side; one thirty-ton gun,
 firing astern on either side; twelve five
 ton guns; twelve six~pounder quick-iring
 guns and nine three-pounder quick-fring
 guns, and a considerable number of ma-
 chine guns for smaller ammunition. Be-
 sides her artillery armament the Victoria
 has powerful ram, and she carries eight
 torpedo dischargers, four above and four
 below water. In the fighting days of the
 Victory ramming was little practised and
 torpedoes were wholly unknown. But there
 is another point of view in which the Vic
 toria compares in highly favorable de-
 gree with the Victory, and that is in the
 smallness of the number of officers and
 men required to handle the ships. The
 complement of officers and men on board
 the N1cIOTy was 6lSl6 nuHQEeO ana
 while on board the Victoria it will only be
 five hundred and fifty, of whom one hun
 dred and ten will be engineers and stokers,
 leaving only four hundred and forty off,
 cers and men in combatant capacity.
 Thus, although the Victoria is three times as big as the Victory and prodigiously su- perior in offensive power, there will only be half the number of men exposed to death and wounds in the working of her armament. This result is chiefly due to the mechanical appliances which in recent years have been introduced for working the guns. At the commencement of my career as an artillerist it was regarded as an axiom that no gun exceeding five tons weight could be worked on a moving plat form such as the deck of a ship. A gun of five tons, twelve hundred weight, firing 8 charge of twenty pounds of powder and shot of sixty-eight pounds, had been tried on shipboard and found uEmanagea- ble and it had to be replaced by a gun of four tons, fifteen hundred weight, firing only sixteen pounds with the same weight of shot, At the present day we have to deal with guns of one hundred and ten tons, which nave to be charged with powder and shot weighing together two thousand seven hundred tons. It is manifest that the load ing and manipulation of such gun could not possibly be effected by the manual labor of any number of men that could be crowd ed around the gun, but it has been effected by the employment of very few men act- ing through the agency of hydraulic machin- cry. Then again to go from the largest to the smallest artillery gun to be used in the Victoria, which is the three-pounder Hotch- kiss quick firing gun, we have another exam pie of what mechanicians have done for ar tillery. It is gun of great range and pen curative power, which by means of mechan- l ical arrangements can be fired with delibe- I rate aim twenty times a minute by the em- ployment of only three men. Or if we take ! the quick-fring gun which has been recently l designed and perfected at Elswick, and 1 which fires any desired weight of projectile between thirty and forty pounds, and com pare it with the old thirty 1.-two pounder, such as the Victory carried, and which required eight men to work it at the rate of one round minute, we have in the new weapon gun
 of enormously greater power which can fire
 ten rounds minute with only four men to
 serve it, so that this gun, with four men to
 serve it, vii fire as many rounds per minute
 as could formerly bs fired by eighty men
 with ten guns I propose the toast of The
 Royal Navy and Success to the Victoria. "